Talk:X-Men

• Thinking about it* I've buggered this up, haven't I? Not fan orientated enough. Crap. It's not as if there is a huge movement of X-fan, unless I have spent the last four years looking under the wrong rocks. --Buzzylittleb 18:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think there is a movement of X-fen ... but it's sci-fi, not media, fandom. There are a lot of people who collect the comics and cosplay as the characters; that's still valid fannish activity! Since I'm a media fan myself I don't really know where to go with this, but probably trawling the hell out of scans_daily would be a good start. /two cents --Emma 19:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, same here -- the fandom isn't necessarily fanfic-based, but collecting, cosplay, roleplaying, conventions (are there cons?), all of that counts as fanac, all totally valid here. The canon stuff may need to be streamlined a bit, but for a fandom with a source as huge and varied as X-Men, I don't think it's unreasonable that the canon section be a bit longer than usual. --Arduinna 19:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

The fanfic writing for X-men had and probably still has (I was in and out of it around 2001/2002), as far as I remember, its strongholds on personal websites and yahoo groups. If you go into groups.yahoo.com and search for x-men fanfic you get quite a few hits. When I was part of it, one of the main pairings of the fandom, in slash at least, was Gambit/Iceman. Which was what I wrote, apart from a stint into Wolverine/Nightcrawler (comicbook universe, NOT movie-verse) which was done as a request.Ximeria 19:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

OMG, comic-based Wolverine/Nightcrawler?? Where, please? ... ummm, I mean, oh, that's good to know, X-Men fanfic will help flesh out this page. *kof* --Arduinna 20:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I should just take a step back, I've been trying to rewrite and talk about "difference" parallels, and I'm getting a little tied up. I think I just try to explain everything all at once *kof* Comic based Wolverine/Nightcrawler is real. There's an lj comm called logurt, which might be a good starting point *kof* --Buzzylittleb 20:10, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! And yeah, I know the feeling -- too much to do! Must do it all right now! heh. --Arduinna 15:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yeah, heh. It was back in my newbie days and done as a companion piece to my first X-men story, but it works perfectly well as a stand-alone. Although, be warned, it's NC17. It ended up being the beginning of a writing relationship with a friend of mine, but we weren't as compatible writingwise as I think we'd both hoped, so although there's a lot of people who've enjoyed the series that came of it (Gambit/Iceman, Iceman/Nightcrawler, Wolverine/Nightcrawler and all four together... don't ask) I have to admit it's not one of my fonder works, apart from the first two parts of which Felt was the Wolverine/Nightcrawler story.Ximeria 20:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I'm glad it's not one of the ones that makes you less than happy -- and NC17 is not a problem. :) Thank you! --Arduinna 15:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I have one suggestion for re-orienting toward fandom content--the content for "Canon as Intimidating Fandom?" could be rewritten as documenting how fans have been intimidated (or not intimidated) by canon, and how they dealt with it (i.e. talk about what resources they created, what canon they felt safe in ignoring, etc.). Also, if there's a cast of thousands, maybe list them all, optionally with attributes, on a subpage (freeing up space on the main page) and then link from that subpage to character pages for characters with special significance.--Aethel 23:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

The bit that talks about the main books and says [[X-Men/Uncanny]], is that meant to link to a subpage? If so, oughtn't it be written [[Uncanny X-Men|X-men/Uncanny]] so as to proceed normally in the sentence? --Betty 23:42, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Restructure

Moved huge amount of canon stuff to /Sandbox. I hate to just delete so much work, but the amount of canon was suffocating the fandom stuff and also intimidating the hell out of me every time I tried to add something. In any case, there should only be as much canon as is necessary to explain fandom (so hopefully this page will eventually grow big enough that we'll need some of it back.) (I think the intro probably needs re-writing/adding to as well. For a start, it does not actually explain what a mutant is.)

How to structure the page now? I am mindful that I know nothing about XM fandom pre-late 90's, or any fanac not based around fanfic communities, so I don't want to structure it entirely around the history of the fic-writing community. Should it be structured by timeperiods or by different types of fanac/fan communities? --MegR 14:37, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of doing the same thing just yesterday! I'm adding a bunch of information right now. Feel free to move things around as you see fit, and make any necessary corrections. My X-Men days were a long time ago, and I'm operating on not always clear memories. --Anenko 16:18, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking about it yesterday, and then I saw your comment so I decided to just do it ;}. It already looks much better! I'm thinking about pulling apart the Fanfiction section into separate bits about mailing lists, archives, etc, so it will be easier to expand on them. What do you think? more in the hope of someone more knowledgeable coming along than because I have much to add myself, of course, my memory is so bad. Argh, you know I think a few years ago there were a bunch of old OTL people doing huge amounts of work on FanHistory? but goddamn Laura Hale put them off. --MegR 18:21, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I like your idea of pulling apart the mailing lists, archives, and the rest. As is, they're all together in the same section, and then there's a list of links further down the page that repeats the same info.

It's sad that so many fans were burned by the other wiki. X-Men had such a large and vibrant community at one point. And the things that I remember, I have no references for. We might be trading in the "needs more fandom" label for "needs more references." --Anenko 19:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

ETA: Do you think it's a good idea to give the more active X-titles (Generation X and X-Force, not X-Men vs. Uncanny X-Men) their own pages? That would give us room to talk about specific character or pairing issues, and fan reactions to retcons and cancellations, etc. --Anenko 19:57, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

It is looking so much better! I totally messed up the fanfic intro, sorry, will try again tomorrow when I've slept. I'm still trying to figure out where to put current fanac - I know it's quiet, but I'm sure there is some.

I think whenever there's stuff to put on a page, there should be a page! but, I think we should only make the pages if we're going to add to them, because otherwise it just looks sad (like the pitiful Astonishing subpage), and *I* can't think of much to say about GenX and X-Force because I can't *remember* anything. Subpages of this page, I think, rather than top level? They're not really separate fandoms. --MegR 21:34, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I might, at the very least, try to spruce up the GenX Archive page.

And a useful link for anyone interested in expanding on the X-Men pages. It's way out of date, but there are lots of links there. And there's a section on X-Men MUSHes and Telnets to help fill in the RPG category. --Anenko 21:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone remember the (very?) old Stan Lee's "list of stuff you can do" that used to appear in the comics? I distinctly remember it encouraging fanfiction, though not calling it that. Also, any comics fans turned pro comics writers/artists? --MegR 17:54, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of digging through lists of links to X-Men fansites--kind of like we did with the Geocities Rescue Project--but the sheer scope of the project overwhelms me before I get very far. Do you think creating Fanlore entries for old XM sites is worthwhile? --Anenko 23:45, 21 April 2010 (UTC)